What’s Up This Week? A Slew of Setbacks and a Moody New Dining Room

Oy. What a week.

Last week we could see a light at the end of the tunnel. This week, someone detonated explosives and caved that shit right in.

Don’t get us wrong, there’s still some good progress going on, but the home renovation gods have reared their ugly heads to remind us who’s really in charge here.

Let’s begin…

What’s Been Happening

The Painters Quit—or Were Fired?

The actual breakdown of this one is a bit muddy, but there were definitely some issues going on with expectations and communication between some contractors. Seems that not everyone was holding up their end of the bargain, and when hashed out between them, the decision was made that parting ways was better than powering through. At least that’s as much of the story as I care or need to know about, because the rest of my energy needs to go towards figuring out what to do next.

What we do know is that this house is so ready to be finished with paint and stain, so in an ill-planned effort to move things along, we prepped to prime some of the remaining rooms ourselves this weekend. Progress was slowed when we had to address some drywall repairs, but we’ll get there…eventually.

Despite what’s left, *most* of the paint upstairs was completed this week, with a few trouble spots that popped up from drywall issues and a lack of priming. All the staining upstairs is done, again with a few spots in need of cleaning up/repair, but for the most part it’s just waiting for a coat of poly and a prayer.

Downstairs is still very much a work in progress, but we did get the dining room painted with just a few hiccups (why doesn’t anyone prime?!), and we absolutely LOVE the new moody color.

L.O.V.E. Love. If you follow our Instagram stories, you were the first to see the new paint! Follow us there for the most current goings-on around here.

Trouble on Kitchen Island

This pièce de résistance took up a lot of time this week, in part because of the in-counter charging system that Jim and Andrew brewed up. Three separate “hot spots” will allow for surface charging of compatible devices (sorry, Jim—time to upgrade that Android).

The charging pad is mounted within the underside of the counter, 11mm from the counter surface, and the zig-zag channel holds the charging cable in place until it reaches the cabinet interior, where it will be connected to a transformer.

Once the charging system was completed, Andrew got the underside of the countertop lacquered before installing it on Friday, with a plan to lacquer the top this week. All seemed well until one of those explosives from the Home Renovation gods we mentioned earlier exploded right in the middle of the damn countertop. Over the weekend, one of the wood boards split in two, probably from just being old and dry (these pieces were all sourced from original framing studs that we removed during the second floor demo). Needless to say, that will need some addressing the week.

Boogie Woogie Woogie

It’s electric! The light at the end of the tunnel may have dimmed, but at least we can see in the living room now. The electrician (Jack’s dad) started installing light fixtures and electrical devices, and the whole place is finally starting to look like humans might be supposed to live there.

The freshly painted dining room is lined with new sconces that are awaiting their new candelabra bulbs (not one of the 100 other dimmable LEDs we already bought 🙄). The second floor has most of its fixtures installed, save for the giant chandelier we got for the primary bedroom. Seriously, it’s massive. We’ve yet to determine if it’s Extra in a good, you-only-live-once kinda way, or in a horrible, what-were-we-thinking-please-take-this-away-now kinda way.

What’s Next…

• Jack will be on site to prime a couple of rooms, then she’ll dig into cleaning up the woodwork in the living room. She did a test patch on cleaning the window sills, and it seems as though a hazmat suit might be in order this week. Since they were probably last cleaned in 1960, the cleanup will be very messy and should be done before we apply the top coat of paint.
• We might be bringing in another painter to tackle some of the more complicated spots (kitchen cabinet touchups) plus the remaining wood stain and polyurethane. Luckily it will be unseasonably warm this week, so we can leave plenty of windows open for ventilation while Jack is there, pregnant and performing an exorcism on the dirty woodwork.
• Electrician dad will be back again by mid/late week—along with Electrician brother!—to keep things moving on the electrical front.
• Bonus: Non-Electrician Mom stayed this week to lend a hand with the kids!